Adrian Cho

Cool Stuff

Stuff I find personally cool and/or useful.

Tetra speakers

I am very, very fortunate to have a pair of Tetra speakers. I've never been a big audiophile for many reasons including the fact that I'd rather spend what money I have on a great instrument to make music as opposed to listen to it. In my studio I have a pair of Alesis studio monitors for near-field listening in my studio but did not have any kind of listening setup in our living room. So when I had a chance to get my hands on a pair of Tetras, I was almost drooling. The Tetras I have are the 105s which are the smallest in their range but they still exhibit the superb levels of presence and natural sound that are characteristic of all Tetra's speakers.

BlackBerry 8830 World Edition

Yes I'll admit that I am rather fond of my BlackBerry. The 8830 is a very mature product that simply does everything that is advertised and does it well. I can't find a single fault with this product. Using it I have access to all my contacts, calendar, etc. that I maintain on my computer with Outlook. It's also a great cell phone. I have access to all my various e-mail and instant messaging accounts, web browsing and so forth. The screen is amazingly bright and fully readable in strong sunlight (and automatically adjusts the brightness as needed). The speaker is impressively loud with strong bass response, and well I could go on and on. In fact I will. It also has a GPS unit and mapping software. This device is incredibly packed with technology (and yes it is very small and thin and light) but more important, it is extremely usable in every way. The interface is always intuitive and I've never been frustrated trying to work out how to do something. It's also very stable and has great battery life. A great example of how to leverage technology and deliver a great product. It lets me keep in touch no matter where I am and it works on both CDMA and GSM so you can use it practically anywhere in the world.

My Subaru Outback

It's constantly covered in dirt and there are now rust spots but it's covered over 300,000 KM in six years with barely a glitch. It's got rally-bred reliability and great handling for what is essentially a family wagon with an average powered engine. The handling prowess is in part due to the low center of gravity with the boxer engine layout and the constant all-wheel drive which in the manual transmission version I have (I hate automatic transmissions), is distributed 50-50 to the front and rear axles under normal conditions. With my racing and rallying bent, I always drive it pretty hard and it responds. Not surprisingly for a car with a strong racing and rallying heritage, the pedal setup is perfect for heel-and-toe and double-declutching. What else would an Australian drive but a car called an "Outback?" My wife owns a Subaru Impreza too so we're a a Subaru couple!